The door to the Temple of Light opened. Rose, Nathan, Yarid, Glorissa, Sylis and Kylus walked through. Nathan was wearing muddy black wizard clothes; the others were dressed as Serve-Swords.

  The entrance from the Barracks to the Temple opened into a welcome area: a long, wide room with polished, gleaming white floors, walls, and ceilings. The room had no windows, but several burning oil lanterns dangled from the ceiling. The centerpiece of the room was a long front desk, made of white stone similar to the room around it, and a sign hanging from the ceiling directly above the desk. The sign was a white banner of cloth with letters written in thick gold and silver thread embroidered into the fabric; the gold and silver letters sparkled and glittered in the lamplight so brightly that they had the feel that magic had been used to enhance their dazzle. The sign said these words: Welcome to the Temple of Light. Rejoice in the Crystal of Light and Embrace the Light of God. You are Welcome Here, and Your Donations Are Also Welcome! I will be making a withdrawal today, not a donation, Rose thought when she saw the sign, a sarcastic smile upon her lips. I hope you will forgive me, priests, but tonight the Crystal of Light will be finding a new home.

  A priest was sitting at the front desk, right in front of them, beneath the sign. The priest’s smooth, supple caramel-brown skin was a sharp contrast to the pure white of his voluminous, heavy priest-robes. The hood of his robe was slung down his back, so that his head and face were fully visible: his head was so bald it shined, but it was matched by the smoothness of his clean-shaven cheeks and chin. He was reading a large folio book, its pages spread out before him on the desk. When the party walked in through the door, he looked up.

  “May I help you?” the priest asked.

  “Why, yes, in fact you can,” Nathan said. “The city is under attack, and a battle was fought to the north. Do you know this?”

  “The Temple has heard of these disturbing events,” the priest said.

  “That’s great,” Nathan said. “Unlike you, I did not merely hear about it; I was there. I was a participant in the battle. I became injured while bravely defending a squadron of Serve-Sword soldiers from an attack by mud golems. The Servants of the Sword were so grateful for my heroic contributions to their cause that they informed me that you priests keep a supply of healing potion in here. I have become a great hero to the Serve-Swords and they told me to tell you they want you to give me some of your healing potion held in this Temple, to cure my wound. The wound festers, and it must be treated soon. I believe you have the healing potion stored in the upper level of this very tower, the Command Tower, right?”

  Rose bit her lip to suppress her laugh. Good thing Nathan found us while we were waiting for Kylus, before we entered the Temple, Rose thought. It was rather clever of me to have Yarid write down a few extra fake names on that ledger, just in case. But this is not my first heist: I know how to plan for the unexpected chaos that always happens during a crime. Nathan is proving himself to be surprisingly useful. Although the thought of Nathan being a hero makes me want to laugh so hard!

  “Why, yes, it is there, but what do you want me to do? Bring it down to you?”

  “No, I ask for no such trouble,” Nathan said. “Just show me the way, and my Serve-Sword attendants will help me as I limp forward courageously to get it for myself.”

  “I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that,” the priest said. “That healing potion is for the priests.”

  “I’m injured!” Nathan said, his voice loud and sharp. “I was gravely wounded heroically and selflessly defending others from harm!” His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “The Serve-Swords owe me for helping them defeat those mud monsters. Do you want to be the one to tell the Sword that the Temple of Light refused to give aid to an ally of the Sword?”

  The priest shrugged. “Fine. Have your way. You will not get into any trouble; this Temple is so well-defended that there is no way for you to mess anything up, or so my boss likes to brag to us.” He pointed a finger to his right. “Go down that hall, open the door, and go up the stairs. And I mean way up. Ten flights of stairs up will bring you to a large, unlocked door. The healing potion is kept there. Some of it is kept in kegs and vats attached to a weird gnome-made contraption which my superiors say pumps it into the air we breathe, supposedly for our benefit. It might work, or it might not. I wouldn’t know: I have not been injured since I joined the Order of the Priests of the Temple of Light. Take healing potion from the bottles kept there, but do not touch the gnomish device. We do not have any gnomes here in the Temple, so if it breaks, we cannot repair it. We would have to hire gnomes to fix it—and I will see to it that the Sword pays that bill, if you break it. Gnomes are expensive!”

  Nathan bowed his head. “Thank you, kind priest. My injury will surely heal once I have that healing potion. I do have one other question. Where is the entry to the hall that leads from the Command Tower to the East Tower?”

  “Why do you want to know that?” the priest asked.

  “I know that the Crystal of Light is kept in the East Tower, so I want to make sure I do not go through that entry and enter that hall by accident,” Nathan said. “I know how precious and valuable that sacred gemstone is.”

  Rose smirked, her mouth well hidden behind her wizard mask and her helmet. Oh God, this is hilarious!

  “If you take that same stairway I mentioned, and you go to the very bottom, five flights of stairs below where we are now, you will come to that door,” the priest said. “But please do not open it by accident. If you do, it will trigger an alarm, and every priest in this tower will come to investigate.”

  They won’t after I put sleeping potion into your air, Rose thought. You’ll all be fast asleep and raise not one hand against me.

  “You will want to be careful not to go through that door,” the priest said, “not only because it would trigger an alarm and cause a headache for us, but because on the other side of that door is a maze. Once you go in and get lost, you will never find your way out. Most of us priests don’t even know the secrets of the maze, so one of us can’t even go in and rescue you if you enter and get lost by accident. You would wander the maze, trapped and alone, for days, until you died in the maze from lack of food and water.”

  Not when Nathan learned how to navigate your stupid maze from that dead architect whose tomb he and Glorissa snuck into, Rose thought. Nathan already gave me detailed instructions on how to get through the maze, but it is convenient that he is now here to lead us past the maze in person.

  “Thank you. I and my attendants will be very careful to never go through that door,” Nathan said to the priest. “Now I and my companions will be on our way. Don’t mind us; we will be out of your hair very shortly.”

  “Wait one minute!” the priest said. “I have a problem with you!”

  Uh oh, Rose thought.

  “What is that?” the priest said, pointing at Lucy. “You can’t bring that thing into our Temple! I won’t allow it! That thing is dripping purple slime, and it will get our clean white floors very dirty!”

  “This is my familiar. Please pay no attention to her,” Nathan said. “The King’s laws state that any wizard of Black is allowed to always have his familiar with him. You can’t keep her out; it’s against the law.”

  “Ugh,” the priest said. “If that’s the law, then okay. Go. I won’t defy the King’s laws. But clean up that trail of purple slime behind you!”

  “Is that the law?” Rose whispered to Nathan after they had left.

  “No! But it should be!” Nathan replied.

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  Nathan and the others went down the hall, found the door, and began to ascend the stairs. The stairs, like the rest of the tower, were made of huge blocks of white stone that had been cemented together. From the outside, the Temple appeared to be one massive piece of white stone, but inside the Temple, the seams between the blocks of stone that built it were visible. Nonetheless, each block of white stone was massive: far too big and heavy for any human or team of humans to lift, so the Temple had obviously been built with the assistance of magic.

  “Sadly, I am not in such great shape that ten flights of stairs are easy for me,” Nathan said, huffing and puffing as he spoke. “I consider myself to be closer to youth than I am to middle age, but I am no schoolboy playing sports and lifting weights anymore. I used to be, back during the glory days of House Darkchurch when I was young, but not now. The magic of Black does not have any ascension or levitation spells, although I believe that Green does. I am really starting to hate these stairs, and I grow weary of that which I hate. Sylis, can your Blue magic fast-forward time for me so that I have already climbed these stairs?”

  “Not unless you have someone else whom I can send back in time by an amount of time equal to the time that I send you forward in time by,” Sylis said. “I can use Blue magic to make you speed up in relation to the rest of us, but then we would slow down because of you, so the team as a whole would get no net benefit. And even then, I want to save all my Blue magical energy. Soon I will need it.”

  “I joke,” Nathan said. Then he paused on the stairs, leaned on the banister railing, and began to gasp for breath. “Well, I would be joking if not… for the fact that there are too many stairs!”

  “Suck it up, Nathan,” Rose said. “Come on, let’s get this show moving along. You aren’t even supposed to be here, so just be thankful we are altering the plan to let you come with us.”

  “I am… very grateful. My gratitude… knows no… limits,” Nathan said between gasps. The party continued climbing the stairs. Nathan brought up the rear, going slowly but climbing fast enough not to be left behind.

  At last, they came to a door at the top of the stairwell.

  “This is it,” Rose said. She pushed her way through the door.

  The top level of the Command Tower was a vast space, but it was jam-packed full of boxes, some lidded, others with their lids looking as though they had burst off from containing too much garbage, which overflowed and spewed its way across the floor in a random haphazard mess.

  “Oh my God! I feel like we’re back at the Van Rozen house before Yarid did his fae song!” Rose said. “Look at this mess. It’s like the attic of a house that never gets cleaned. I surmise that the priests throw all the junk they don’t need up here and then forget all about it forever after.”

  Rose surveyed the mess and shook her head. Then her gaze froze: at the far side of the domed, cavernous room, a contraption with many brass metal pipes coming out of it could just barely be seen from over the top of the mountains of garbage. “Come,” she said, and the others followed her as she waded through the mess.

  “How long will it take you to cast your Red magic?” Nathan asked.

  Rose turned to look at Nathan while she walked. “Not too long. I have the spell ready and—” she froze in mid-sentence, and she also stopped walking forward.

  “What? What is it?” Nathan said.

  Rose did not answer.

  “Has something gone wrong, Rose?” Nathan asked. “We must know now if we need to run!”

  “No… nothing is wrong,” Rose said. “We can proceed.”

  Rose, however, did not begin to walk forward again. Her eyes were fixed on a point directly above and to the left of Nathan’s head, although, to Nathan’s eyes, she was looking at him. Behind him, a giant wooden box had many things spewing out of its open top. A large book, a lamp, many wooden ornaments which appeared to be broken, a clock that had half its face missing. Sitting above them all, dangling from the top of an iron staff, was a small necklace. It was a simple pearl necklace, except that, at its bottom, a ruby locket was threaded into it. The locket was large, with a very big ruby, and the ruby was set with diamonds, sapphires and emeralds studded around it. The white dots of the diamonds, the blue dots of the sapphires and the green dots of the emeralds formed a distinctive decorative floral design, with the ruby in its center, like the heart of a blooming flower.

  I studied art history while I was a girl in the school for the education of noble young women, Rose thought. A nobleman’s wife is expected to be able to sip tea and discuss meaningless trivia about old paintings and look pretty while her husband discusses important things with other men, things like war and money and court influence. My teacher taught us about that necklace and locket! That is the Relic of Chester! I would stake my life on it!

  “Rose! You were in such a hurry to proceed, and yet now we wait for you!” Nathan said. “Please do not delay us any longer!”

  “Nathan is right. We would be well advised to go quickly,” Yarid said. “We have no way of knowing when the White Wizard will sense our presence. And things will grow very bad for us when he does.”

  Rose began to walk, but the wheels in her mind were spinning while she led them toward the gnomish machine. I assume those stupid priests thought it was costume jewelry and just tossed it away up here like a worthless piece of garbage, Rose thought. Only God knows how it made its way to the Temple of Light, but I see that the priests hold other treasures than the Crystal of Light. The Relic of Chester is one of the most famous treasures in all the realm, although it was believed to have been lost centuries ago according to art historians. Why, oh my God… I would bet my life that the Relic of Chester is worth more money than the Crystal of Light! Rose surreptitiously glanced at the others while she walked. None of them seemed bothered by anything. None of them noticed it. And these idiots would not know what they had seen, if they had seen it.

  Rose frowned; none of the others saw her frown upon her lips, which were hidden by her red-and-pink rose-design mask and her Serve-Sword helmet, whose visor was down to hide her face. I hate that I have had this idea, but I have had it: only my Red magic will protect these morons when I flood the air with sleeping potion. If I choose not to cast the spell on them, they will fall asleep with the priests. They would never know, until they were asleep, at which point they could do nothing. Her frown deepened. Then I grab the Relic of Chester, run for the exit door, and vanish into the night, never to be seen or heard from again. I can pay off the contract the Death Otter put on my life, and buy a palace made of gold, and hire an army of servants, and still have a mountain of coins left over, were I to fence the Relic of Chester. I would not sell it for one coin less than five thousand platinum coins. Every nobleman art collector in the realm would bid on it, and every underworld rogue crime boss would bid, too. Merely the ability to hold such massive wealth within a small highly portable object is worth half that much in and of itself.

  They reached the gnome-made device at the far end of the room. It was a large copper vat full of boiling, bubbling, steaming gray liquid, with many pipes flowing out of it; the pipes went in many different directions, but where the pipes ended could not be seen. Next to the device was a rack, which contained many small glass bottles, also full of gray liquid. Rose held her hand to her face and began to tap her chin with her finger, tap tap tap.

  “Are you going to cast the spell?” Nathan asked.

  “Give me a moment. I’m thinking,” Rose replied.

  “I would make some sarcastic comment, except that, as your fellow wizard, I know the importance of thought to proper magic,” Nathan said. “Just don’t think yourself to death by accident, and think all of us to death, too.”

  Rose smiled. “I might think you to death, Nathan,” she said. She motioned to her five companions. “Stay close to me,” she said. “When I cast the spell, all this healing potion will transform into sleeping potion instantly. If you are not near me, I might not be able to cast the spell to protect you from it. And, if you breathe in one wisp of its vapor, you will pass out, and fall into a deep comatose sleep, instantly. No one would be able to wake you for about ten to twelve hours.”

  “I’m right here,” Sylis said. He, and the others, hunched up next to Rose, huddling together to be as close to her as possible.

  “Here it goes,” Rose said. She reached out and dipped her gauntleted hands into the vat of bubbling gray fluid. A red stain appeared in the water, emanating out from her hands. Soon, the entire tub of liquid was red, not gray any longer. Red smoke began to billow and rise from the red liquid, in thick, puffy red clouds. Even in the few areas not full of thick red smoke, the air seemed saturated by a fine red mist.

  “I don’t feel good,” Sylis said. “I think I might vomit.”

  “It’s just sickness from breathing in the sleeping potion,” Rose said. “Don’t worry. I cast the spell in such a way that none of you will fall victim to it.”

  “No magic words, no rites, no rituals? You just dip your fingers in?” Nathan asked. “I had not expected the magic of Red to be so… boring.”

  “Playing cards or rolling dice is the fun part of Red magic,” Rose said. She smiled. “The other fun part is… drinking the potions.”

  Sylis stumbled and began to fall over… but then he righted himself and stood up straight.

  “Okay, I feel better now,” Sylis said. “I guess Red magic just doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Every priest down below is asleep now,” Rose said. “But the White Wizard is not. Let’s run and get to the next defensive layer before he detects us!”

  I couldn’t do it, Rose thought. I don’t know why. Maybe some part of me is starting to like these idiots? Or maybe it’s the fact that the Dark Wizard would hunt me down and kill me if I betrayed his plans. I know there’s a chance that the Dark Wizard is dead and that there was some other wizard pretending to be the Dark wizard, but someone powerful was behind the Dark Wizard’s mask. Rose’s lips formed a lopsided grin. Yes, I will blame it on the Dark Wizard—not on the fact that somehow, I fear I have grown to love these morons, each of them in their own weird, special way.

  Rose and the others turned and went back to the stairs. Behind them, the entire chamber of junk and garbage was concealed within one giant cloud of thick, opaque red smoke.